Bonus Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on February 28, 2021
… is from page 208 of Lord Acton’s late-1890s lecture “The Influence of America,” as this lecture appears in Essays in the History of Liberty: Selected Essays of Lord Acton, Vol. 1 (J. Rufus Fears, ed., 1985; on-line access to this essay is available free of charge here):
[T]he American notion [is] that the end of government is liberty, not happiness, or prosperity, or power, or the preservation of an historic inheritance, or the adaptation of national law to national character, or the progress of enlightenment and the promotion of virtue; that the private individual should not feel the pressure of public authority, and should direct his life by the influences that are within him, not around him.
DBx: Let us hope, however vain this hope might now seem, not only that this liberal, adult, and civilizing notion is regained by us Americans, but also that it will soon be embraced by all of humanity.
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